The LA Trip

Wow. It's Monday, the weekend's now over, and it seems like so much has happened in such a short span of time.

After we arrived in LA, we spent Thursday evening at the Grove, a combination of theaters, stores, restaurants and farmer's market. It was a nice evening at leisure in preparation for the next day's meeting.

Early on Friday we got up and drove over to the offices of Growing Generations. We were greeted by Gail, who we sat down with and chatted about PB, and the process for the day, and answered some questions for us.

We also met with Teo M., who runs operations, and he went through the cost breakdowns of the process, as well as when and how payments are due, including which pieces were available for payment via credit card (in case we wanted to earn miles when possible).

We got to meet Erica face to face and learned some interesting facts about her, including the fact that she was also an egg donor previously for the program.

During our meeting with Erica we found out that PB and her husband were going to be late to the match meeting because they had been rear-ended in their car on their way to the office. Not an auspicious start for the match meeting. It was Friday the 13th after all.

So prior to meeting with PB and her husband, we also sat down with Kim B., the staff psycologist at Growing Generations, who wanted to address any concerns and questions we had. She had met both PB, the surrogate mother, and BR, the egg donor, and thought they were both good matches for us.

When we finally got to meet PB and her husband it was obvious they were both still a little frazzled by the car accident, but Gail let us in the discussion of introducing ourselves to each other. She facilitated the meeting for about half an hour or so, and then sent us on our way to a restaurant for our lunch meeting, unchaperoned.

PB and her husband were extremely friendly, easy to get along with and made the meeting very easy for LH and myself. We presented them with a Chinese Yi-Xing teapot we had picked up last year in China, as a welcome gift, and it seemed well received.

The parting words from Gail before we left the Growing Generations office was for us to call her before noon on Monday, to let her know if we wanted to go ahead with the surrogate, and for PB to let us know if they wanted to go ahead with us, the Intended Parents.

It turns out I learned from Gail later that PB and her husband called her that afternoon after lunch and tol her that they wanted to go ahead with us as Intended Parents! LH and I discussed and had already decided Friday as well, but I didn't call Gail until Monday the 16th around 9 am to let her know our acceptance.

Later, Friday afternoon, I had my appointment at California Fertility Partners to do my testing, which inlcuded a blood draw and urine sample. They were going to do a toxicology work up, CBC, hepatitis B and C, HIV, among other tests. Anita, the nurse at CA Fertility Partners informed us that we did not need to leave another sperm deposit as the one from April was sufficient (we had been told earlier to expect to leave another sample). The results of the sperm tests showed a lower than average concentration, lower motility than average - 39%, but a larger than average volume, which made up for the lower concentration.

We spent the day Saturday in Hollywood visiting my sister and her family who were doin in LA for the day as well. We flew back into San Jose Saturday evening, and got to spend Sunday back at home. LH and I talked for a while on and off through out the weekend about PB, about in-vitro fertilization, about Growing Generations and the whole process.

On Monday, I called Gail, as I mentioned earlier and got the good news that PB and her husband wanted to go forward with us. Around 12:30pm I had a phone consult with Dr. Ringler from CA Fertilty Partners, since he was unavailable during our Friday visit. He walked through the procedures, and timelines during my call.

So now we wait for the test results, we wait for BR, the egg donor to be screened (she's the long pole, as her tests take 3 weeks to complete), and then we can go forward!

At least at this point in our journey, if feels like we're moving ahead, and quite quickly!